Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s
forces attacked cities where the opposition is concentrated as
countries including Turkey, France and Russia sought to present
their own solutions to end the violence.

Syria’s army continued shelling Homs, killing at least 126
people, Al Jazeera reported today, and more than 300 people have
died during Assad’s siege since Feb. 3, Human Rights Watch said
today. More than 5,400 people have died since protests began
last March, according to the United Nations.

Alleged images from the assault on Homs and activist
reports of the suffering have sparked global outrage at the
offensive and put pressure on countries to draft their own
proposal to the 11-month crackdown. Russia and China on Feb. 4
vetoed a United Nations resolution to facilitate political
transition in Syria.

“I am appalled by the Syrian government’s willful assault
on Homs and its use of artillery and other heavy weaponry in
what appear to be indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas,” UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a
statement from Geneva. There is an “extreme urgency for the
international community to cut through the politics and take
effective action to protect the Syrian population.”

Russia is seeking to broker talks between the Syrian
government and the opposition, while China has suggested further
cooperation at the UN. France is pressing for deepening ties
with Syrian protesters.

Turkish Proposal

Turkey has called for a “broad-based” coalition that
should include members of the UN Security Council, the
Organization of the Islamic Conference and Arab states, Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

“Right now, all that concerns us is to stop the bloodshed
in Syria,” he told reporters late yesterday at the airport in
Ankara before leaving for the U.S. to meet with Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton. “We have never supported an intervention
from outside the region, we kept working to prevent it.”

As the Security Council voted on an Arab League plan backed
by the U.S. and the European Union, Assad’s forces killed at
least 174 people in one of the deadliest days since the unrest
started, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights.

The prospect of civil war has been growing as the daily
death toll mounts and Assad uses tanks and artillery in cities
where the opposition calls for the end of his rule.

‘All-Out Assault’

“It is clear the Syrian government has interpreted the
Russia-China veto as a carte blanche to launch an all-out
assault on cities like Homs without caring who’s killed in the
process,” Anna Neistat, associate emergencies director at New
York-based Human Rights Watch, said in today’s e-mailed
statement. Assad’s forces fired “hundreds of shells and mortars
into residential neighborhoods,” the organization said.

China is holding talks with Syrians including the
opposition while urging Assad to honor pledges for reform,
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said. Earlier today, Vice
Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said China’s veto of the UN measure
to facilitate a handover of power doesn’t preclude further
cooperation with the U.S. and other Security Council members.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the international community
must seek “coordinated approaches” to help Syrians resolve the
crisis, according to a statement posted on the Kremlin’s website
yesterday. The leaders’ telephone conversation followed Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s Feb. 7 visit to Damascus.

UN-Arab League Mission

The Arab League plans to resend observers to Syria and has
asked for the UN to send a special envoy with its mission, UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in New York
yesterday.

While Ban said it was “not clear” if Assad would accept
such a proposal, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told
reporters in Berlin today that he proposed a joint Arab League-UN observer mission to Syria to try to stem the bloodshed. He
also suggested naming a special UN envoy for the Syrian
conflict.